Bringing lots of rain. Hopefully that will translate into lots of tasty greens in a few weeks but it is putting a damper on my digging out the worm bin project.

So many projects lined up. Tonight I spent some time readying a chest of drawers for my daughter’s room. Secondhand and the staples and a few knobs were loose, so I got out the wood glue, a screwdriver, and a hammer to tighten it all back up. I have drawers sprawled across my living room drying tonight; hopefully tomorrow they’ll be ready because I’d really like to get the dresser moved into one of my daughter’s closets to give her more floor space and further the organization of her room. She wants a big girl room and I told her that the only way she’s going to get it is if we can get the clutter under control on an ongoing basis. Her room is the victim of generosity from family and friends. We just don’t have enough storage space for everything she’s been given.

I was hoping to carve out time tonight to do some cutting and sewing. I have some old sheets that I’d like to turn into circle skirts and shorts for her before summer. I also have to cut and sew new insoles for my favorite pair of scuffs. The soles and uppers are still good, but the insoles are a tattered mess. I’ve been looking at fabrics trying to figure out what would be cushiony on my feet yet durable. I’m thinking that I might layer some fabrics to get the effect I want. I have some thick, soft felted wool scraps and an end of upholstery fabric. The upholstery fabric would probably adhere nicely to the interior of the shoe with a layer of strong glue and the wool would be comfortable on my feet. I really love my scuffs, I don’t want to replace them if I can repair them.

I also need to get my canning jars out and prewashed since the farmers’ markets are opening again and I can get cheap produce to can. I didn’t can hardly anything last year because of my eye surgery and such. Definitely can’t let that happen again this year. I need to at least put up several quarts of bean soup for convenience eating all year long.

Not every domestic art thrills me, believe it or not. I have always loathed doing the dishes. No idea why, I can just think of 20 other things I’d rather do first. So I’m not sure why it took me 35 years to figure out that paring down to just the dishes that we need and use most often could provide ambition and save me time overall. I know how I think, if there are only four bowls in the house, then I am motivated to wash said bowl immediately after use rather than setting it aside, confident of the ready availability of other bowls, and eventually ending up with a sink full of dishes that I really, really don’t want to do and the more dishes there are, the less I want to do them.

So I’ve been packing up the unnecessary dishes for the next trip to Value Village and it’s been very satisfying to watch them go. Even more satisfying is seeing my dish cupboard looking less cluttered in a small kitchen where every inch of space is precious.

I think I may need to approach every room in the house this way. I’ve taken many loads of things to Value Village over the past year, but I still feel like there are plenty of places I could make cuts that would most likely make my life easier and my house less cluttered. It’s a winnowing process that seemingly takes several passes.

Sounds strange, I know, but I had 1.5 lbs. of honey that had started to crystallize and needed to do something with it, so I decided to brew some cough syrup. I scooped the honey out into an enamel pot, added one chopped, strong white onion, and two cold care tea bags from my ample tea supply. It’s been cooking over low heat for the past four hours. I’ll check it again before bed to see if enough of the juice from the onions has reduced for it to be strained and ready for bottling. Once it’s cooled, I’ll add some echinacea/goldenseal extract to it. I find the syrup to be handy for coughs and that under-the-weather feeling during cold season. You can make it with just onion and honey or even garlic and honey for a soothing simple syrup, or you can add more herbal ingredients for whatever cold symptoms plague you most. If you cook it down to a very thick syrup, you can either pour it into candy molds or pour it out on a silicone mat, let it cool, score it into pieces after half an hour, and have your own homemade lozenges. I may go down and add some fennel fronds to mine just for flavor here in a bit.

There was a local produce sale at my neighborhood store, so I went over to check it out and came home with some nice hot and sweet peppers, onions, and corn. I made some salsa with the peppers and onions and some tomatoes I had on hand from the CSA delivery. Tomorrow I’m taking some to share with a friend when I go to visit her. I might make and can some fennel onion relish in the morning before I leave. I haven’t done nearly as much canning as I’d have liked this summer and I’m feeling inspired after my parents brought several jars of home-canned salmon to me when they came to pick up my daughter for the week.

I plan to do a lot of cooking and preserving while she’s away. Mostly to keep myself from missing her so much, but also to have a head-start on easy meals for when she goes back to school. I’m going to prepare muffin batter and freeze it in the paper liners so that I can bake them the night before for an easy homemade breakfast when served with sliced fruit and a glass of milk. I also want to stuff potatoes to freeze for quick and easy dinners, as well as freezing plenty of soups, stocks, and pesto. I’ve also had more apples drying so that we have plenty for school snacks. I might do some pears as well for variety.

I’ve spent much of today pondering my attraction to the slow lifestyle. What makes a woman with ready access to all manner of urban conveniences go out of her way to make as much of her own stuff as possible? A large part of it is quality. I can be a quality snob and yet I’m still a pennypincher, so it’s always made the most sense to me to do as many things as I was capable of myself so that I would be pleased with both quality and price. I’m also a perpetual student. I love to learn new things and, since science and history are two of my favorite subjects, learning how to do things the old-fashioned way or knowing why it is that a certain process works is very satisfying. I’m also not someone who has an easy time sitting still, so the handicrafts give me a way to sit a spell and still get something done. Do a granny square a day on the bus and pretty soon you have a blanket. I prefer to use my time doing things that are either very useful or make me very happy, even better when I can combine the two. Last, and one that has become so important to me since becoming a mother, the projects that I do relax me and give me a creative outlet. Sure, it can be a pain to have to come home after a long day to make a loaf of bread for the next day’s lunches, but once I start working the dough and get into that rhythm, it seems like so many of my cares just fall away and, by the time I’m pulling the loaf out of the oven, I’m calm and happy again.

I like this slower pace. Americans spend so much time dashing around that we forget about the small pleasures of life, the little things that make a big impact and bring us happiness and contentment – that’s why so many of us are sick and stressed out. An hour in my little garden or in my kitchen is worth a dozen psychiatrists and personal trainers. And now that I’ve done some research on various DIY topics and put them into practice, I’m more conscious of my impact on the world around me, how the choices I make affect others not only in my immediate neighborhood, but around the world. Sometimes I make it a game to see how I can reduce my impact even more. What else can I make or do differently?

Believe it or not, for all of my ambitious tendencies, I’ve spent much of today relaxing with a crochet project and a selection of documentaries, getting up to stir a pot or move dishes and clothes around, then back to my yarn. I love days like these. I made a big, delicious glass of apple/carrot/beet/spinach juice about midday with some yogurt on the side, then had a delicious dinner of soft polenta with fresh tomatoes, mixed mushrooms, fresh basil, and roasted garlic while I listened to Haydn on the radio. It’s like a vacation without leaving home.

My daughter had some impacted wax in her ear that was causing problems, so we were home Thursday and Friday to take care of that with a combination of heating pads, homeopathic ear drops, and gentle massage around the affected ear. It drained on Friday morning and she’s been feeling better ever since.

However, since she was mostly laying in bed, that gave me time, when I wasn’t working from home or taking care of her, to do some cleaning and work on projects.

I’ve been drying excess fruit in the oven pretty much around the clock and my daughter is eating it as fast as it cools off. Today there are the last of the apples, nectarines, and blueberries in there. The house smells amazing. We also baked sugar cookies because I wanted to experiment to see if I could bake cookies in the solar oven. I baked most of them in the conventional oven, but put a dozen onto the bare floor of the solar oven, then promptly forgot about them as I got busy with laundry and washing the kitchen floor. My daughter reminded me that they were out there. They didn’t come out soft like the ones from the regular oven, they came out thin and crispy but still very tasty, the butter and sugar both browned to a deep golden color. I won’t call them an absolute success, but they helped me learn some more about my solar oven. next time I’d bake them on a silicone mat for ease of removal and I might form and chill a butter-heavy dough before putting them in an already-heated oven so the butter didn’t just melt off and the cookies might retain some loft and softness. My other thought was to make a pan-sized sugar cookie and place it into a heated, covered pan for baking and slicing.

Even when things don’t come out perfect, I like learning more about what I can do with my oven. Every mistake that I make teaches me more about how to work with this marvelous piece of equipment. I really want to take it to the beach on a sunny day and bury it in the sand for insulation, then use it to cook a late lunch.

I’ve been out in the garden a lot, last night I spent an hour sifting old potting soil to remove perlite, rocks, and large debris. I’m trying to get as much of the perlite out of my garden as I can. I hate to throw perfectly good soil away, though, so I’m out there with an old colander sifting it all into buckets, then I’ll separate out the rocks and bark from the perlite and compost the natural materials. I haven’t decided if I’m going to throw out the perlite or use it as a white mulch around something that needs some protection from the heat – I really hate to throw things out if there might be a use for them. Tonight I’m going to use yesterday’s reclaimed soil to prep the carrot and radish pot. I’m hoping to get at least two harvests of carrots, maybe even more of the radishes.

Last night I added an organic activator to the outdoor compost barrel. I need that barrel for one of next year’s apple trees, so I wanted to break down the components as much as possible well ahead of spring planting. I also set up a folding plastic table and, until I can build the box planters that I want, it doubles my planting space so easily and gives me a place underneath for plants that need some sun protection.

In our walks around the neighborhood, I can’t say how sorry I am that so many useful plants are planted way too close to the road, soaking up pollution from traffic. There is a juniper near us that is drooping with the weight of its berries (they’re used as a spice and as a medicine) and it’s way too close to traffic for me to feel safe about harvesting any. What a waste! So many wild edibles and medicinal plants that I can’t harvest. I really need to get back to the land so “traffic” is no longer a reason for not foraging for free, useful plants.

There are some exciting events coming up in my area. There is a Portland Fermentation Festival on Thursday, August 27th 6-8pm at Ecotrust’s Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center, 721 NW 9th Ave. Portland, OR. I’m going to try to make it to that to see what people are doing with natural fermentation processes and, hopefully, to taste lots of yummy treats. There is also a native plant sale coming up at the nature park on Millikan Way on October 3rd from 12-4pm. I’m going in the hopes of finding some native edibles such as Indian plum. That nature park also has family hikes and a lot of other fun, educational activities throughout the year, usually free or very cheap.

I found out that the recreation center near our house is going to start offering a parent-child martial arts class. My daughter is very enthusiastic about the idea. I’m going to see if I can get us registered for that, as well as get her registered for swim lessons again.

Still so much to do but my back is aching from doing the floors. I’m hoping that a lie-down will give me the relief I need to finish my other projects for the day, not to mention tomorrow’s projects.

In the outdoor compost pile, we had cherry tomatoes and millet volunteer this year. The harvest from the tomato plant has been meager though the quality has been very good. I think that the millet is foxtail millet. It has soft, feathery heads and tiny seeds that would actually look nice in a vase with some fall flowers. I picked a handful of the seed heads that were drying on the stalks to save seed. I brought them inside, laid them on a paper towel that I’d set on a wire rack, and the seeds should finish drying, then be easy to strip from the stalks without damaging them. Once they’re dry and off the stalks, I’ll package them in an envelope to plant next year or to trade with other seed savers.

We don’t have enough millet for hulling and eating at this point but because it has proven to be so hardy, I definitely want to keep the seeds. I think that home grain production is an important and almost forgotten art.

I’ve been doing further experiments with the solar oven. Today I baked some bite-size spinach tarts by laying a silicone baking mat on the floor of the oven and setting the frozen tarts right on it. They cooked all the way through in about three hours. They didn’t brown quite like they would have in an electric oven but they were perfectly edible. I warmed tomato soup in a small pot on the side for an electricity-free dinner that was quite tasty. The more I use my solar oven, the more I like it. Someday I’d like to build a stand for it to sit on with an electric eye that would move it to follow the sun for longer cooking times and less time spent turning the oven for maximum sun.

I’ve been spending so much time on creative projects lately that I realized my house is in need of some attention. Oops! I guess this is a cleaning weekend.

The weather was very mild today, the perfect day to do heavy work in the garden. I clipped the dead stems from the bunching onions, top-dressed them with compost from the worm bin, and re-seeded the soil since only one flower was produced this summer and there were bare spots between. We really love our green onions, they’re so nice to have and so easy to maintain all year long.

I have a hanging terra cotta pot sculpted to resemble a face. It used to have a thyme plant in it, but the finches laid waste to that earlier this year when they were looking for nesting materials. I decided to try it as a planter for chives, so I removed the soil that was in it and worked in some compost, then refilled the pot and seeded it before moving on to prepare a pot for bush basil that I’m planning to start outside in this nice weather and bring in as a window plant when the weather turns cold. Fresh basil in November would be a treat.

After puttering around out there a bit more, I washed up and went to the store to get dog food, check the clearance bins, and purchase a beautiful mint plant that I’d seen while walking by the day before. It’s nothing fancy, just common mint, but it’s big and abundant and needed a home with me – it was calling to me. I’m trying to decide which planter to put it in. Once it’s established it needs some trimming because it was allowed to get very leggy and unkempt; besides, trimming it should make it bush out a bit and fill a pot. It has some lovely flower spikes on it.

The clearance bins yielded canned salmon, diced green chilies, and whole grain pilaf – not a bad little haul. I bought a few other essentials, then carried my loot home. The people at the grocery store always look at me like I’m crazy when I ask them to try to divide things up evenly between the bags because I’m on foot. “But this is so heavy!,” the courtesy clerk said as he was handing me my reusable bags today. It really wasn’t bad, probably 30 lbs. divided between two bags. Are people really so soft that carrying 30 lbs. a few blocks is considered near-impossible? That just seems strange to me. I mean, I was happy to set it down when I walked through the door but I wasn’t in pain or gasping for air or anything like that.

We ate leftover lentils and rice for dinner with banana-orange-pineapple smoothies for dessert. Yum! Since then I’ve been sitting, nursing a bit of a low back ache from bending and stooping so much today. I’m making an afghan for my clerk because she got married a few weeks ago. A lovely scrap afghan made from Lion Brand Homespun in a variety of colors. I like how it’s shaping up; it looks nice and it’s so soft. I recently finished an embroidered dresser scarf for my daughter and I’m now making one for myself. The same daisy pattern but in different color schemes to match our personalities: her daisies in variegated purples with vivid yellow, green, and blue; mine in white with softer yellow, green, and red. Not sure what my next projects will be, but I’m trying to make a serious dent in my embroidery thread and yarn collections. It’s kind of a challenge to see what I can do with what I have here already. I may end up making more home decor items to gift in an effort to use up the low-end acrylic yarns I have in abundance from my thrift store purchases. I should do some more charity crochet, too, because I have some baby yarns. Make hats and booties for the pediatric hospital that saved my daughter when she had pneumonia a few years ago.

Productive today and more to do tomorrow. Hopefully my back cooperates.

This morning I started the major project of revamping my container garden. It fell into terrible disrepair after my ruptured cornea and some personal troubles. Until recently I just didn’t care about my usually vibrant deck and now that I’m feeling better, I miss having that space full of useful plant life. My strawberries, green onions, and parsley survived my rampant neglect, but everything else went the way of the dodo but this does give me the opportunity to correct some mistakes I made the first time around and hopefully to revamp my containers for more efficiency. I would love to create a tiered box system along the back wall so that I could do a miniature version of crop rotation for optimal plant health and productivity. I’d also like to re-dedicate some of my half-barrels to naturally dwarfed fruit plants.

I need to reread my book about lasagne gardening for some inspiration. All I did today was mulch the strawberries and parsley with dead leaves that had blown onto the deck and the remains of the plants that died in the heat, then emptied some of the smaller, unproductive pots into a double-layered garbage bag. It started getting warmer out after about an hour, so we stopped there and maybe I’ll go back out after dinner to start refreshing the dirt with worm castings and “tea”. Sieving out the worms is going to be a project since I don’t have any screen to fashion a sifter

I finally finished the pillowcase dress a few days ago (pictures below); I think it turned out really well and I’d like to make a few more.
[caption id="attachment_295" align="aligncenter" width="215" caption="Hand-sewn pillowcase dress"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_296" align="aligncenter" width="289" caption="Hand-embroidered hem of pillowcase dress"][/caption]

Today I made homemade pesto, hard-boiled eggs, and rice pilaf. I have a lovely head of cabbage that I’m trying to find culinary inspiration for. I wish I had a fermenting crock, some homemade sauerkraut would be so good. Maybe a stir-fry or some coleslaw with an interesting twist.

All of this despite a serious bout of the lazies making me want to kick back and do very little.

Today has been another adventure in domesticity. Boxing more for the thrift store run, washing linens, doing dishes – all of those things that pile up throughout the week. Now I’m sitting down with a small pile of mending: my daughter’s skirt with the splitting seam and my one-dollar thrift store sundress that needs a new button in the front placket. I’m pretty sure I have a matching button in my button box; if not, I’ll move one up from low on the hem where it won’t be noticeable. The dress is black with purple flowers, it would look nice over a black cotton slip with a lace edge.

One of the things I’d really love to learn to sew is undergarments. I like wearing slips under my dresses, but it’s become so difficult to buy a good one that I’m starting to think I should make them. I miss the cool, cotton slips I had as a girl, especially when the summer heat has a nylon slip clinging sweatily to me during my commute. So many projects, but it seems that knowing how to make undergarments would be useful and money-saving.

We’re having baked potatoes tonight topped with black beans cooked in a mild salsa, plain yogurt, and a bit of shredded cheese. A good, hearty dinner that I don’t have to think about overly much. Tomorrow will likely be fried rice with green onions, broccoli, celery, and egg. In an effort to save money, we’ve been eating a lot more meals that revolve around a main helping of some starchy food supplemented with whatever vegetables, nuts, and dairy we have on hand with fruit for dessert. We both seem to be doing pretty well eating like this, though I have to be cautious to be getting enough healthy fats to keep my joints from acting up. I eat handfuls of nuts as between-meal snacks, raw walnuts and pecans mostly, that seems to help a lot.

Since we continue to move away from heavily processed foods as a regular part of our diets, it’s funny to notice that my food cravings have changed in step. Last week I found myself cravings sweets, specifically very ripe bananas, and a salt craving for miso soup that would not quit until it was met. I used to crave ice cream, bacon, and cheeseburgers, now I want avocados and fresh blueberries. I still eat junk food once in awhile but not nearly as often as I used to and I can see the effects in the clarity of my skin, in my energy levels, and in a reduction of the chronic pain that used to define much of my life.

Seems that coffee is the only habit I can’t break. I’ve cut way down but it’s still a morning habit at the office. I’m hoping that working from home one day a week will help me cut that day as well. Not that I necessarily want to quit coffee completely, but I hate having bad habits and addictions.

My daughter’s bedroom has been the victim of many generous gifts. I was after her to pick it up when I went in and realized that the poor girl was really and truly out of space. Our home is small and as an only child and the youngest grandchild, she gets a lot of presents but only has one small room to put them in. So we decided that we would make a family project of going through her room section by section to figure out what she wanted to keep and what she wanted to give to a thrift store. So far we have removed several boxes of clothes, books, and toys from her room with more still to go.

I like doing this with her because I believe it teaches her that the quantity of possessions is less important than the quality. It’s also a chance to give her practice making choices for herself and affirming her confidence by respecting those choices.

And she wants a “big girl room”, a reading chair and lamp, a nightstand, and a rug of her choosing. She’s also talked about a desk, though she does have a small table and chairs that I think will suffice for now.

It’s been fun, too, an opportunity to talk about the things we like, the things we value, art project ideas, and more. Keeping those lines of communication open with her is so important and I appreciate the time doing housework together provides us, the teamwork – all vital components of household harmony.

Cleaning with her is inspiring me to take another pass at my own bedroom and storage space in an effort to unclutter our lives so that we can concentrate on the things that are truly important to us.

One of the things I most enjoy about the DIY lifestyle I have chosen to live is that it offers ample opportunities for reflection and meditation.  This morning I was shucking peas for tonight’s dinner (mashed potato volcanoes, a household favorite) and it took me back to childhood, sweltering summer afternoons spent shucking peas, snapping beans, or husking corn in the shelter of my grandmother’s shady back porch before dinner while the bees and hummingbirds flocked to the fuchsias in their hanging baskets, the smell of grandpa’s roses wafting through the heavy air. I always loved those times, there was a rightness about them, a sense of peace that’s hard to get in an increasingly busy world. I still enjoy those repetitive tasks that allow your mind a brief vacation from the hurry of it all: folding laundry, peeling potatoes, etc. I think it’s always a good idea to approach your domesticity with intent, then simple acts can become meaningful expressions of love for yourself and others and make chores seem less onerous. Maybe one day I’ll become enlightened enough to apply my philosophy to the dishes, the one household task I truly loathe doing and am guilty of putting off every chance that I get.

Today has been busy with chores. I vacuumed and poured out the contents of the vacuum chamber into the worm bin (why add it to the trash when it’s practically dirt already?), washed the dog, did dishes, and now I’m taking a break from folding several loads of laundry. I keep hoping to get around to pressing and measuring the pink pillowcase that I want to turn into a sundress for my daughter, but I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get to it with laundry to still wash and fold, dinner to cook, and getting ready for the start of another week. But I’m working on creating more time in my schedule, it’s become a priority because the exhausting commutes and the rest of the rat race are getting to me. I know the strain of it all is affecting my productivity and my overall well-being.